“I don’t think I want to see Dr. Newan anymore.”

 

Lacey is sitting on the sofa, teasing a piece of thread between her fingers in a cat’s cradle. She’s insisted on having the television on all morning, even though she’s not watching it, while I’ve been pacing the warehouse, trying and failing to prevent myself from feeling like an increasingly stressed animal trapped in a motherfucking cage. A cage that’s my own admittedly very comfortable home, but still. I want out.

 

“I thought you liked Newan?” I scratch at the stubble on my jaw, carefully stretching out my body. I’m sore—not only my fucking stomach where I was stabbed, but everywhere else, too. Moping around in bed sounds mighty appealing right now, but I know my body and I know what it needs: it needs to be challenged in order to heal. I’ve been still for too long. I’m used to working out every day. To pushing my body to the limits. Being wracked with a fever and on my back for four days has royally fucked me over.

 

Lacey holds up her cat’s cradle to me, the thread manipulated around her fingers and thumbs, and looks at me expectantly. I pull my eyebrows together, glaring down at the thing. “Seriously?”

 

“Seriously,” she replies. She has that look on her face; the stubborn one that lets me know I can either acquiesce to her demand, or I can deal with the consequences. And I can’t be fucked dealing with a Lacey that’s been pushed over the edge this morning. I huff, pinching the taut lines and folding them around and under, pushing up so that the thread transfers to my hands in a new pattern.

 

A childlike surprise takes over her features. “How do you know how to do that?” she asks, laughing.

 

I consider telling her to mind her own damn business, but then I figure what’s the point. “My mother liked to do it with me,” I tell her. Her smile fades.

 

“You remember her?”

 

“I remember her,” I confirm. “Imperfectly. I remember small bits and pieces of her. Like this.” I offer out the cat’s cradle to her so she can take her turn at manipulating the pattern. “But those bits and pieces don’t make up a whole person.”

 

Lacey takes her turn. She stares down at the game we’re playing, now looped and twisted around her fingers once more, and looks…impossibly sad. “Was she beautiful?” she asks. “Your mom. Was she really beautiful?”

 

I clear my throat, reining in the desire to clam up and avoid the question altogether. “Yes. Yeah, she was.”

 

“Do you…” She hesitates, as though she’s unsure whether she should continue on her train of thought. “Do you have any pictures of her? I’d like to see her.”

 

Her interest is understandable given that I’ve never mentioned my mother before and here I am suddenly talking about her. Lacey’s probably intrigued about the sly remark Newan made about her, too—And then of course there’s the history with your mother. A history I have no intention of ever openly talking about. I’d show Lace a picture, but I only have one photo of the woman who sometimes visits me when I sleep. I’ve kept it secreted away for years, and even though I haven’t looked at it, the knowledge of its presence here within this warehouse is fucking torture enough. I haven’t been able to look upon her face without experiencing a dark rage that consumes me for days, so I think of my fucking self instead of Lacey’s curiosity. “I don’t. I wish I did.”

 

Lacey just nods. She curls her hands into fists, loosening the threads and signalling that my duties are now over. I go back to pacing.

 

I need to get my head back in the fucking game. There’s so much I have to do, and being injured is just not part of the plan. I need to figure out where Charlie is right now. I’ve been fuming ever since I learned about him setting me up and sending me to Chino, and I’ve wanted him to pay. And in order to keep Sloane safe, I thought the best way to make him pay was to kill the motherfucker. Then there’s no chance he can ever put her in danger again, but while that solution appeals to my more pragmatic side, the vicious side of me wants Charlie to suffer.

 

Chino was not a walk in the park for me. Neither was Charlie killing one of my closest friends—the same murder that put me in prison. The lies, the deceit, the surveillance, the colossal sense of complete betrayal. None of these offenses are going to be resolved by Charlie’s quick and bloody demise. No, he deserves something a little more…appropriate.

 

He deserves to find out what Chino’s like first hand. He deserves to lose all he holds dear. He’s already lost the Duchess, and in all honesty there’s only one other thing I know of that Charlie genuinely cares about in this life: his money.

 

It’s a serious fucking shame that Rick’s dead. It would have been great to know more about what those bikers were doing, scamming information about Charlie’s businesses and their locations out of Rick. There is one other way of finding out, I guess. I could just ask the Wreckers. They might tell me, considering how much they clearly seem to dislike Charlie, but then again they might bury me up to my neck in sand, pour honey over my head and leave me to be eaten alive by fucking fire ants. The Wreckers don’t usually deal in drugs or guns—Charlie’s preferred method of paying his bills. They’re fences and thieves. They’ll steal and sell anything that’s not nailed down, and if they didn’t steal it, whoever did steal it can take it to them, knowing the gang will have no qualms about selling items in one of their many seedy pawn shops. For a healthy fee, of course. Their base is up on Aurora Lane, north of the city.

 

If I can just get them to—

 

“Zee?”

 

—tell me straight what they want with Charlie’s operation, then maybe I—

 

“Zeth!”

 

I stop pacing, snapping my head up. Lacey’s holding out the television remote, pointing it at the screen. “Are you listening to this?” she asks. She’s frozen still, a bowl of dry Lucky Charms balanced on top of her knees.

 

“…say that there is no risk of a contagion affecting any of the hospital’s patients at this stage, although no less than three nurses inside St. Peter’s have confirmed a worrying detail. One of the paramedics who answered the emergency nine-one-one request for urgent medical care at the gas station in Burien where the unknown woman mysteriously fell ill, is also displaying the same symptoms. Doctors have no idea what caused the woman’s death, or whether the staff and other patients inside are now at any sort of risk, but hospital administration have placed the building on lockdown, refusing to let anyone in or out. Our sources claim that—”

 

My heart is a jackhammer in my chest. “What the hell?” My voice is steady, but with every passing second the news reporter asks or answers more questions, I can feel a very unpleasant, sick feeling forming in the pit of my stomach. “That’s St. Peter’s?”

 

“Yeah,” Lacey answers. “There are so many cop cars out there. They think this is some sort of attack. And Sloane’s in there, right?”

 

“Yeah. Yeah she fucking is.” Lacey’s right about the cop cars; there are four cruisers parked up outside the hospital, visible over the shoulder of the female news reporter. But it’s not the cruisers that have me on edge. It’s the Aston Martin one-77 parked by the emergency entrance.

 

Charlie Fucking Holsan.

 

This is another message. Except this one isn’t written on paper. I know him. I know him all too fucking well. This message is going to be written in blood.

 

It’s perfect, really. The perfect way to get my attention. Sloane’s parents are no longer around for him to threaten, so he’s upped the ante, knowing I won’t be able to resist. Something ugly and very disagreeable sets my nerves on edge. I grab out my phone and dial quickly. I have to speak to Sloane. I have to let her know that motherfucker is inside the building with her.

 

The line clicks as it connects, then begins to ring. Four rings. Five. Six. How many fucking rings does it take for someone to answer their phone? “Shit.”

 

“She’s not supposed to have her phone with her while she’s working, Zeth,” Lacey says quietly. She’s chewing on her thumbnail, her legs now tucked up underneath her, eyes intent on the television screen. “Don’t freak out,” she tells me.

 

She’s telling me not to freak out. Oh, holy fuck I must look like a complete psycho right now if Lacey is trying to talk me down off a ledge. “I’m fine,” I say. The phone rings out for the ninth time and I hang up, cursing under my breath. Well. There’s nothing else for it. I snatch up my leather jacket and start heading for the door.

 

“Where are you going?” Lacey leaps off the couch and practically sprints to beat me to the warehouse exit.

 

“Where d’you think?”

 

“You know they’re looking for you. Every worker at that hospital’s seen your face because of Frankie’s brother; Sloane said so. The cops’ll arrest you the moment you pull up out front.”

 

Inconveniently, Lacey has a valid point. Fucking Frankie Monterello and his pain-in-the-ass family still causing me headaches from beyond the grave. “I’m not hanging out here while Charlie’s inside that hospital.”

 

“Are you worried about her? You think he’s going to kill her?”

 

My ribcage constricts just hearing her say that. It’s like there’s a block inside my vocal chords that cuts me off whenever I think about saying something that’s not a threat or a curse word strong enough to turn the air blue, though. I can’t admit to being this terrified. I clench my jaw and look away.

 

“Because that’s what I’m worried about,” Lacey says. “I’m really worried about that right now. I love Sloane.” She loves Sloane? Well, this is news. I jerk my head back, narrowing my eyes at her. Lacey actually returns my scowl. “Not like that, you jerk. I love Sloane like a sister. That’s the way she treats me—like family. And you love her, too. I am so sick of you guys—”

 

“Do you want to come with me or not?” I say. I can’t listen to her complain about how useless I am telling people—Sloane in particular—how I feel about them. I have to do something to get her out of that hospital. Lacey blinks at me, shock marking her face.

 

“Yes, I want to come with you,” she says.

 

“Then shut up and get your jacket.”

 

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

 

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. I’ll bring Cade, too.”

 

“Cade’s with you?”

 

Michael makes an affirmative sound. “He and Carnie showed up earlier. Came to ask me something on behalf of my cousin. Cade wanted to see you, but I told him you were recovering. Which I’m guessing you’ve decided against, now?”

 

“I’m already recovered,” I growl into the handset. “Make sure he leaves his cut behind. And leave Carnie, too. Three of us is enough. We don’t wanna draw any unwanted attention.”

 

“Got it.” Michael hangs up, and I slam through my gear changes like the gearstick has done something personally to offend me. I barely lift my foot off the gas to take the corners.

 

“She’s fine. You know that, right?” Lacey tells me, leaning through the gap between the driver and passenger seats.

 

“She’s not answering her phone.”

 

“She’s probably just busy. It has to be mayhem in there.”

 

“She should have answered her fucking phone.”

 

“You’re gonna go in there and you’re gonna overreact, aren’t you?”

 

I wrench the steering wheel round, swinging the Camaro into the hospital parking lot. The place is buzzing. The news vans haven’t moved—they’re parked as close as they can possibly get to the glass frontage of St. Peter’s, and two different reporters are standing in front of the building, each talking into microphones as cameramen shoot them. Charlie’s Aston Martin is still parked by the emergency entrance, too. The sky’s darkened significantly since we left the warehouse, and it’s just starting to rain. I may not have stuck around in high school for long, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t read. I read everything from Plato to Sun Tzu, all the way through to Vonnegut. Right now the weather smacks of a pathetic fallacy that perfectly matches my black mood. Lacey grabs hold of my wrist from the backseat before I can get out of the car. “You haven’t answered me,” she says. “Are you planning on overreacting?”

 

With a steely expression directed into the rearview mirror, I fix her in my glare. “Lacey, I never overreact. If I can’t get in there, I will react accordingly. I. Will. Fuck. Shit. Up.” She starts to object, but it’s too late; I’ve already climbed out of the Camaro.

 

I assess the situation as quickly as possible. The entrance to St. Peter’s is closed, and two cops are standing outside; besides them and the news crews, there are few people waiting in the parking lot. A handful of concerned bystanders wait in the cold, presumably for their loved ones inside. It looks as though the rest of Seattle has taken the threat of chemical poisoning on board and have stayed the hell away. Smart fuckers.

 

Lacey gets out of the car, grimacing as a gust of frigid wind buffets us, hair flying around her face. “You won’t leave me, will you?” she asks.

 

“No, I won’t leave you, Lace.” I wish I could. I wish she would stay in the fucking car if I told her to, but I know even saying the words is a complete waste of breath. The last time I told her to wait in the car, she walked in on me shooting Frankie, her ex-fuck buddy, in the face. “You don’t need to worry. We’re gonna do this nice and quiet. I don’t feel like reacquainting myself with the penal system. There, does that make you feel any better?”

 

She shakes her head, shrugging her shoulders up around her ears against the cold. “Not really.”

 

“Great. Then let’s go.”